There are three days left for Why Am I Eating This Now? Live: Align Your Life and Eating (WAIETN).

Please note: I’m unclear WAIETN will run next September.

I love WAIETN. It’s the fun entry point into psychological flexibility, which feels like “Oh my GODDESS! I have so much more control over my life than I realized!” After being in business for more than 17 years, I have learned to honor my capacity based on applying psychological flexibility and I’m unsure WAIETN will run again next September.

Speaking of capacity…

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My sister jokes that our parents raised us to have the confidence of a tall white man.

And we’ve both been confused at times because the world doesn’t reflect this confidence. Because even with our privilege, the patriarchy still stands.

And my confidence evaporated when it came to my food, weight, health, dating, and finding meaningful work.

My “let’s give it a whirl” attitude that had me adventure to Boston, London, NYC, Paris, and taking on academic and work challenges disappeared with the things that were hard for me, making stress feel high stakes. I’d struggled with:

• Asthma and mysterious weight gain as a kid.
  ​
• Cancer as a teenager.
  ​
• Yo-yo weight, acne, depression, IBS, emotional and binge eating into my
  early 20s.
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• Being a late bloomer who didn’t date much.
  ​
• Being middle-class and wanting more financial security than our family had.

What I can now name is I had a capacity issue.

But, I thought I had a food coping problem.

Meaning, the uncertainty trigger in the tender areas of my life overwhelmed my system. This was not my fault. Real life imprints on all of us.

So when I got stuck in shame from not sticking to my eating plan (again!), was in cancer scanxiety season, or felt like I was wasting my potential scarce years of life at a meaningless corporate job, these stresses felt like an ocean wave taking me under, thrashing me about, and tossing me onto shore. With the biggest wedgie ever.

Yet that same uncertainty trigger in the confident areas of my life felt exciting. When the waves came, I trusted I could figure it out. And even if I didn’t ride the wave perfectly, I tried again. This success built upon itself. Over time I built capacity for risk, freedom, and adventure even when I felt uncertain in places I had previous success.

Eventually it was this capacity for uncertainty that enabled me to leave my corporate life and take the road less traveled of “following my bliss”, which was investing in graduate school to study systems thinking and behavior change, instead of more nutrition (food is the easy part folks!).

It was the same uncertainty feeling.

But in successful contexts, the capacity I had built made uncertainty “fun stakes”.

In tender contexts, my lack of capacity made uncertainty “high stakes”.

And this makes sense: if you’re focused on coping, you don’t build your capacity. The result? You feel smaller in relation to your emotions.

But when you build capacity, which you do in WAIETN Live: Align Your Life and Eating, the emotions feel smaller. Stress feels easier. Less high stakes.

And thus I was so focused on weight loss. Because I thought weight loss would give me capacity.

Because capacity makes life easier and is an “insurance policy” when taking risks. With capacity, you trust yourself and you’re open to experimenting because you don’t take everything personally.

In WAIETN Live: Align Your Eating and Life, you will build your capacity with the primary emotion that stresses you out, overwhelms your system, and causes you to turn to food. Because you will continue to feel this emotion forever.

Building your capacity with this eating trigger is relieving. Fun. Freeing.

And coping is unsustainable:

• Coping is about white-knuckling restriction. Capacity leads to expansive possibilities.
  ​
• Coping feels like high stakes. Capacity feels like “let’s experiment” stakes.
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• Coping feels like banging your head against a wall. Capacity feels like freedom.

WAIETN is unique in that we build capacity holistically. We focus on your body and brain. Physiology and Psychology. Because working on both leads to better results.

Because while we are here to play and explore with the WAIETN process, we aren’t here to play with your health and goals.

Building capacity around uncertainty in the areas that haven’t come easily has given me a more whole, resilient, and wildly trusting form of confidence.

It’s also lead to the success I’m most proud of in my life: creating a meaningful body of work and business, overcoming infertility, unmedicated childbirth, and Mothering/living against the grain in ways that align with my rebel values. And, this put weight in a much smaller place in my life.

I have real compassion for 20-something Ali that was turning to food because my system was overwhelmed by my real life past, not some “self-limiting beliefs”.

As my colleague and friend Laura McKowen says

“It’s not your fault. But it is your responsibility.”

&

“Life doesn’t get easier. We get better.”

WAIETN can support you in this capacity challenge. Because who has energy, time, or an inflationary food budget to cope?

​WAIETN Live is open for registration today thru Monday September 18.

SIGN UP
3 days left!

Want to learn more?

Here’s more on who this program is for (bad joiners who hate small talk), how we’ll break the cycle, client results, and success stories. And here’s your last chance to watch the free sneak peek workshop: How to Stop Stress Eating.

Be Well,

P.S. Are you a change agent who wants to support your clients to build capacity instead of offering coping strategies? If so, consider my Truce Coaching Certification, which opens for registration this Monday, September 18-October 6. And, we have our first launch event, When Atomic Habits Implode: The Structure of Complex Change on Tuesday at 12 pm EST. Sign up for​ all three right here.

1. The Missing Piece in Sustainable Change: Understanding Complex Change (9/19)
2. Walk Your Talk: The Business Case for Personal Development (9/26)
3. TCC Alumni Open House (10/3)

Sign up or learn more about TCC.

In TCC, we learn how to help our clients build capacity to create the life they want to live. WAIETN is just one version of a program created that supports clients self-authoring their values and was derived from my TCC methodology.

 

“Ali’s teaching is both deep and practical. Why Am I Eating This Now? empowered me with tools to help me make balanced, healthy choices with not only food, but relationships, work, and life in general. As someone who values nuance and growth, it was just the right amount of time and information for where I was at with my health, food, and life.” -Reese Spykerman

 

“I wish I could bottle this feeling up and give it to everyone. Having a long history of trying Weight Watchers, I knew that there was an emotional piece behind my eating choices that I had to figure out. Why Am I Eating This Now? gave me a clear, exact process and tools to understand why I turn to food and how to change this. I’m making better choices aligned with my body and the life I want to live. I wish I could bottle this feeling up and give it to everyone.” -S.S.

 

“It’s not about the food! Participating in WAIETN gave me clarity and hope. I better understand what is going on in my own head and feel empowered to enjoy my life in a way I’ve never been able to before. It’s not about the food! It’s about me and discovering how I can get to a place where I feel at home in my own skin again.” -Katie

 

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